Samuel Woodworth

Samuel Woodworth (January 13, 1784 – December 9, 1842) was an American writer, literary journalist, playwright, librettist, and poet. He is best remembered for the poem "The Old Oaken Bucket" (1817), but he is also the first American to write a historical novel.

Woodworth was born in Scituate, Massachusetts, to Revolutionary War veteran Benjamin Woodworth and his wife Abigail Bryant. He was apprenticed to Benjamin Russell, editor of the Columbian Sentinel. He then moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where he briefly published the Belles-Lettres Repository, a weekly. He next moved to New York City, but recalled New Haven in his A Poem: New Haven.

Woodworth married Lydia Reeder in New York City on September 23, 1810. They had ten children between 1811 and 1829. Woodworth remained in New York for the rest of his life, dying there on December 9, 1842.